Hyperscale Data Centre Count Passes The 300 Milestone

New data from Synergy Research Group shows that the number of large data centres operated by hyperscale providers has hit the 300 mark, after a flurry of year-end data centre openings by Amazon, Google and Alibaba.

One notable feature of the global footprint is that despite a major ongoing push to locate new operations in countries around the world, the US still accounts for 45% of major cloud and internet data centre sites. The next prominent locations are China and Japan, with 8% and 7% respectively.

The three leading countries are then followed by the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Germany and India, each of which accounts for 3-5% of the total. The research is based on an analysis of the data center footprint of 24 of the world’s major cloud and internet service firms, including the largest operators in SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, search, social networking and e-commerce.

On average each of the 24 firms had 13 data centre sites. The companies with the broadest data centre footprint are the leading cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft and IBM. Each has 40 or more data centre locations with at least two in each of the four regions – North America, APAC, EMEA and Latin America. Google and Oracle also have a notably broad data centre presence.

The remaining firms tend to have their data centres focused primarily in either the US (Apple, Twitter, Salesforce, Facebook, eBay, LinkedIn, Yahoo) or China (Tencent, Baidu). Previously Alibaba also was focused mainly in China but it has now opened data centres in the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and the UAE.

John Dinsdale, a chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, predicts that hyperscale growth will go on on unabated, with operators passing the 400 data centre mark by the end of 2018.